1、 外文翻译 A Survey of the Current State-of-the-Art in Electronic Commerce and Research Issues in Enabling Technologies Material Source: Software Research and Development CenterDepartment of Computer EngineeringMiddle East Technical University Author: Asuman Dogac Abstract Electronic commerce is a generi
2、c term that encompasses numerous information technologies and services used to improve business practices ranging from customer service to intercorporation coordination One of the most common instances of electronic commerce is the exchange of goods and services over the Internet but there are many
3、other forms of electronic commerce such as controlled electronic purchase or virtual malls Electronic commerce is not a futuristic dream. it is happening now with many well established success stories. However, the electronic commerce services that are established so far are still far from being mat
4、ure.There is no real integration of the underlying technologies and the provided services lack many important but also more challenging features.Electronic commerce is not a single uniform technology,but rather characterized by a wide range of services and operations including;establishment of initi
5、al contacts; suppliers search and negotiation; exchange of information;sales;pre- and post-sales support;electronic payment;distribution logistics;establishment and coordination of virtual enterprises; shared business processes;etc.In all of its forms, electronic commerce makes use of information te
6、chnologies from very different areas:databases,transaction processing,interoperability of heterogeneous information resources, intelligent agents multimedia systems,security and workflow systems.In this paper, the currentstate of the art as well as research issues related with enabling information t
7、echnologies for electronic commerce are discussed. 1 Introduction Electronic commerce in its most general definition,refers to selling and buying on the net. In this context,it is not an entirely new activity:Traditional electronic commerce through such means as electronic documentinterchange (EDI),
8、 bar code and interenterprise messaging has been an exciting and growing aspect of information and communication technology for several years.However since traditional electronic commerce relied for the most part on value-added networks (VANs) and private messaging networks which are relatively high
9、 cost and offerlimited connectivity the traditional electronic commerce never became a killer application. On the other hand， the Internet has worldwide connectivity, is growing phenomenally in every aspect of our society, can be interactive and is relatively inexpensive and is thus making the most
10、exciting development for commerce in this century possible. Electronic commerce is based on a variety of technologies,most notably, (1) interoperability (2) electronic catalogs, databases and multimedia systems (3)intelligent agents (4) work ow and process automation (5) security protocols However,
11、electronic commerce services that are established so far are still far from being mature.There is no real integration of the underlying technologies,and the provided services lack many important but also more challenging features such as properly structured support for: (1) establishment of initial
12、contacts (2) suppliers search and negotiation (3) exchange of information (4) sales, pre- and post-sales support (5) electronic payment (6)distribution logistics (7)establishment and coordination of virtual enterprises (8)shared business processes Moreover, each of the underlying technological areas
13、 poses signi cant open research challenges by itself.Major progress in the above mentioned key technology areas is necessary to bring electronic commerce to a more advanced form that should be promoted as a ubiquitous service.In this paper the current state of the art and future research directions
14、in the enabling technology areas are discussed. 2 Interoperability The progress and wider dissemination of electronic commerce will be hampered by self contained,closed markets that can not use each others services and incompatible applications and frameworks that can not interoperate.As an example
15、there is usually a need to access catalogs from different vendors.Furthermore,the catalog information need also be integrated with other computer applications like order entry,shipping,invoicing,inventory control, etc., to create a seamless electronic commerce system for the business.The differences
16、 and heterogeneities in such systems requires the handling of the interoperability problem.The interoperability architectures to be developed should be open and preferably be based on the mediator/wrapper paradigm where information sources are “wrapped“ so that their interfaces to the outside world
17、are uniform.Object-oriented technology can be used to realize mediator/wrapper paradigm. An object-oriented “communication bus following Common Object Request Broker Architectures (CORBA)Object Request Brokers(ORBs)can be used in conjunction with the Internet environment for this purpose (CORBA 2.0a
18、nd IIOP with HTTP.HTML and Java). Indeed, these set of technologies constitute the basis of some of the major electronic commerce platforms like Netscape ONE (Open Network Environment) Or acles NCA Network Computing Architecture),IBMs CommercePoint and Sun and JavaSofts Java Electronic Commerce Fram
19、ework. Using CORBA 2.0 and IIOP with Web (HTTP,HTML) and Java rather than Web alone provides the following advantages. (1) Updates and inserts are at the heart of electronic commerce.Originally updates and inserts were not possible on the Web:the only way to communicate with Web servers was by click
20、ing on hyperlinks to surf between documents. In the middle of 1995,Web forms appeared which are HTML pages with one or more data entry fields and a mandatory submit button.When submitted, a Web browser collects all the inputs from the form puts them in a HTTP message and sends it to a Web server.The
21、 server invokes the program or the resource named in the URL and passes the method request and the parameters to the back-end program using Common Gateway Interface (CGI) protocol.The back-end program executes the request and returns the result in HTML format to the Web server using the CGI protocol
22、. When this HTTP/CGI layer is replaced by CORBA. Since CORBA allows clients to directly invoke methods on a server,all this overhead is avoided. Furthermore any IDL defined method on the server can be invoked and typed parameters can be passed instead of just strings. (2)With CGI a new instance of a
23、 program must be started every time an applet invokes a method on the server. With CORBA,the same server object receives successive calls from the client and preserves the state between these invocations. (3)CGI is a stateless protocol,that is,CGI does not maintain information from one form to the n
24、ext.Therefore hidden fields within a form are used to maintain state on the client side.Hidden fields store information a user enters and resubmit that information in subsequent forms without having the user reenter it.CORBA maintains the state between client invocations avoiding this overhead too.
25、(4)CGI creates a bottleneck because it has no way to distribute the incoming requests across multiple processes and processors.CORBA ORBs on the other hand can create as many server objects as necessary.These server objects can run on multiple servers to provide load balancing for incoming clientreq
26、uests. (5)With CORBA， Java clients and applets can invoke a wide variety of IDL de ned operations on the server.In contrast,HTTP clients are restricted to a limited set of operations. (6)CORBA provides a rich set of distributed object services that augment Java,including metadata, transactions, secu
27、rity, naming,trader,and persistence. It should be noted that,like HTTP,CORBAs IIOP uses Internet as the backbone.This means that both IIOP and HTTP can run on the same networks.HTTP can be used for downloadingWeb pages,applets,and images CORBA can be used for Java client-to-server communications.Jav
28、a, in return, complements CORBA.While CORBA provides a distributed object infrastructure that lets applications reach across net works, languages and operating systems,Java provides.a portable object infrastructure that works on every major operating system. Java is making CORBA ubiquitous on the We
29、b.In fact Object Web may be the killer application for CORBA.For example,Netscape is bundling Visigenics VisiBroker for Java（ a CORBA compliant Java ORB） in all of its future browsers and servers. Another advantage brought by Java to CORBA is the following.Java code can be deployed and managed centr
30、ally from a server.The code is updated once on the server and clients can receive it when they need it.This brings the advantage that the client code need not be updated on each client when there is a change. This in turn simpli es code distribution in large CORBA systems. As a summary， CORBA in con
31、gunction with Web and Java seems to be a very promising infrastructure for electronic commerce applications Yet it should be noted that a major market shareholder,namely, Microsoft, is not using this technology but uses its proprietary Distributed Component Object Model (DCOM)as the infrastructure f
32、or its electronic commerce products. 3 Electronic catalogs,database systems,and multimedia systems Electronic catalogs integrate graphical front ends with product databases to allow users to browse merchandise using their computers.Electronic catalogs have the following advantages over their hard co
33、py equivalents. (1)They provide a company access to global markets without requiring physical presence (2)They save enormous amount of developing,printing,and distribution costs (3) Electronic catalogs can be updated as frequently as necessary with information about product announcements special sal
34、es and inventory status in contrast to hard copy ones which become out dated shortly after their distribution (4)They are available to the customers 24 hours a day,7days a week (5)Electronic catalogs can be integrated with other electronic commerce applications like order entry,shipping,invoicing,or
35、 inventory control (6)They can contain full speci cations of the products and can facilitate better customer service In the following the features commonly found in electronic catalogs are summarized: (1)User Interface,Most electronic catalogs use theWeb for their user interface but some use or plai
36、n text. (2)Shopping Cart: Electronic shopping carts are analogous to their real-world counterparts.A customer may add or remove items from the cart,which usually keeps a running price total of its contents. In some cases,the electronic catalog can store the contents of a customers cart between sessi
37、ons,or even provide the merchant with a pro le of the customers buying habits.Shopping carts are a useful way for customers to keep track of purchases throughout the many pages of a Web catalog. (3)Search Mechanism,Although products are usually arranged in categories for convenient browsing,most ele
38、ctronic catalogs include search tools to help the customer to find a product.Searches by keyword or product number are common. More complex search tools allow logical expressions in queries. (4)Scalability:Most catalogs allow the merchant to add and remove content to accommodate inventory expansion
39、and reduction. (5) Order Processing Electronic catalogs vary greatly in how they handle order processing.Some catalogs merely provide customer and product information to the merchant,while others transfer funds between banking institutions over the Internet and automatically notify the shipping depa
40、rtment of the order. (6) Database Layer, Some electronic catalogs read or import product data directly from an existing database.Others require the merchant to translate their data to a different format or even re-enter product data by hand. Most electronic catalogs can get product data from product
41、 databases,either through their ODBC interfaces or through a translation software. Catalog creation services typically handle data conversion as part of their contracts.Electronic catalogs range in complexity. Some of them contain only text data,however more complex ones include audio and three dime
42、nsional graphics as well as search tools. Yet to provide further bene ts to electronic commerce the catalogs should not only have the full multimedia capabilities with the inclusion of videos and audios but also provide database management system technology to manage multimedia catalogs.The use of d
43、atabase technology provides many advantages the most important of which may be the ability to query the data using a high level interface.To provide a flavor of the existing technology,two of the Commercial Off the Shelf catalog builders are briefly summarized in the following: (1) Microsoft Site Se
44、rver Enterprise Edition 2.0： Site Server is a suite of programs for creating catalogsunder Windows NT and the Microsoft Internet Information Server (IIS). Merchants can create basic sites with the Web-based Store Builder Wizard and customize the results with the VBScript and JavaScript tools in Visu
45、al InterDev or HTML.Site Server connects to most major(ODBC-compliant)database formats and includes the Commerce Server 2.0software to handle online purchases. It also includes a Usage Analysis module that can generate 25 different tracking reports and a Site Analyst tool for locating broken hyperli
46、nks.Customers benefit from a persistent shopping cart that retains its contents and the Microsoft Wallet technology that can automatically provide payment method and shipping information when making purchases. (2) Netscape Merchant System 1.6:Netscape provides this package for businesses expecting m
47、id-to high level purchase volumes.It includes three main components.The Merchant Server is the catalog front end that contains all the layout and product information. It is also responsible for converting existing product databases into the Merchant System format.The Transaction Server processes cus
48、tomer orders on the back-end and gives merchants flexible pricing tools for sales and promotions. It also integrates with existing order systems.The Staging Server is an optional module for previewing a catalog site before releasing it to the public.Templates are included to hasten catalog layout.Cu
49、stomers are treated to a powerful search tool that accepts logical expressions, a shopping cart and multiple security layers. 4 Intelligent agents Intelligent agents are programs that perform specific tasks on behalf of their users.Agents are distinguished from other types of software because they are independent entities capable of completing complex assignments without intervention,rather than as tools that must be manipulated by a user.In other words an agent denotes the hardware or software based computing system that enjoys the following properties:
